1785
| Years: 1782 1783 1784 - 1785 - 1786 1787 1788 | |||||||||
| Decades: 1750s 1760s 1770s - 1780s - 1790s 1800s 1810s | |||||||||
| Centuries: 17th century - 18th century - 19th century
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1785 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar).
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Events
- January 1 The first issue of the Daily Universal Register, later known as The Times, is published in London.
- January 7 - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England to Calais, France in a hydrogen gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.
- January 27 The University of Georgia founded
- July 6 - The dollar is unanimously chosen as the money unit for the United States. This is the first time a nation has adopted a decimal coinage system.
- August 1 - Fleet of French explorer Jean Francois de Galoup, count la Përouse leaves Paris for circumnavigation
- August 15 - Cardinal de Rohan is arrested in Paris - the necklace affair comes into open
- November – Drought in Haiti
- University of New Brunswick founded in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
- Coal gas first used for illumination
- Louis XVI of France signs to a law that a handkerchief must be square
- British government establishes a permanent land force in the Eastern Caribbean, based in Barbados
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Births
- January 4 - Jakob Grimm, German philologist, folklorist, and writer (d. 1863)
- January 4 - Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (d. 1831)
- February 10 - Claude-Louis Navier, French engineer and physicist (d. 1836)
- March 27 - Louis XVII of France (d. 1795)
- April 4 - Bettina von Arnim, German poet (d. 1859)
- April 26 - John James Audubon, French-American naturalist and illustrator (d. 1851)
- May 18 - John Wilson, Scottish writer (d. 1854)
- July 6 - William Jackson Hooker, English botanist (d. 1865)
- August 15 - Thomas de Quincey, English writer (d. 1859)
- August 23 - Oliver Hazard Perry, American naval officer (d. 1819)
- November 18 - David Wilkie, Scottish artist (d. 1841)
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Deaths
- January 3 - Baldassare Galuppi, Italian composer (b. 1706)
- January 19 - Jonathan Toup, English classical scholar and critic (b. 1713)
- January 23 - Matthew Stewart, Scottish mathematician (b. 1717)
- April 14 - William Whitehead, English writer (b. 1715)
- May 8 - Etienne Francois, Duke of Choiseul, French statesman (b. 1719)
- May 8 - Pietro Longhi, Venetian painter (b. 1701)
- June 2 - Jean Paul de Gua de Malves, French mathematician (b. 1713)
- June 30 - James Oglethorpe, English general and founder of the state of Georgia (b. 1696)
- August 17 - Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of the Colony and the state of Connecticut (b. 1710)
- August 26 - George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville, British soldier and politician (b. 1716)
- August 28 - Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, French sculptor (b. 1714)
- October 4 - David Brearly, delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention (b. 1703)
- November 18 - Louis Philip I, Duke of Orléans, French soldier and writer (b. 1725)
- November 19 - Bernard de Bury, French composer (b. 1720)
- November 25 - Richard Glover, English poet (b. 1712)
- December 29 - Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian author (b. 1742)
